Konnect is an open-source native KiCad 10 plugin published on GitHub that lets Claude and other AI assistants design real printed circuit boards through the Model Context Protocol. The project has gathered around 1,300 GitHub stars and is under very active development in 2026.
Konnect ships as a single Rust binary that plugs into KiCad and exposes more than 220 tools across on-demand toolsets: schematic capture, PCB placement and routing, ERC/DRC and design-review audits, a local 2.5-million-part JLCPCB catalog search, reference circuits and a full manufacturing export pipeline. Unlike its predecessor KiCad-MCP-Server, which chained TypeScript, Python and SWIG bindings, a Konnect tool call is a direct function call through KiCad’s official IPC API, with real-time board edits that respect KiCad’s undo/redo, plus a live schematic viewer so you can watch the AI work. Bundled skills teach the model KiCad conventions, and a context-economy router loads toolsets on demand instead of flooding the model with every tool at once. It installs from the KiCad Plugin and Content Manager on Windows, macOS and Linux.
Konnect is free for individuals and small teams under its “free for the little guys” terms; larger commercial use requires a paid commercial license (see the project’s COMMERCIAL.md).
Electronics engineers and hardware hobbyists who design boards in KiCad and want an AI assistant to place, route, check and export production files with them.